NationofChange
Image Credit: Food Tank
Food insecurity rates have skyrocketed
during the COVID-19 pandemic, but even before March 2020, many
Americans already faced challenges accessing healthy and affordable
food.
“Food desert” has become a common term
to describe low-income communities — often communities of color — where
access to healthy and affordable food is limited or where there are no
grocery stores. Living in Tucson, Arizona, in the Sonoran Desert, taught
me that despite its common usage, “food desert” is an inaccurate and
misleading term that pulls focus from the underlying root causes of the
lack of access to healthy food in communities. The language we use to